When a year begins with the spectacular downfall of the most popular and powerful icon in sports, you know it's going to be a doozy.

Lance Armstrong self-destructed before our eyes in January. The lights went out at the Super Bowl in February. Louisville's Kevin Ware suffered a gruesome broken leg on live television in March.

Then came April. We saw the ugly video of the Rutgers men's basketball coach throwing balls at his players' heads. Then, Tiger Woods got into the second of his four 2013 rules kerfuffles at the Masters. Three days later, two deadly bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

Three and a half months into 2013 and the sports year already was one of the worst of all time.

Then came the biggest performance-enhancing drug bust in Major League Baseball history, with the suspension of 13 players. Unfortunately, one of them, Alex Rodriguez, refused to leave.

A few weeks later, the dog days of summer also brought a $765 million settlement for former NFL players suffering from the lingering and debilitating effects of on-the-job concussions. While the lawyer for the plaintiffs was pleased to be eventually getting some money into the hands of those who need it, the agreement left much unsaid, undone and unknown.

Within months, new names were talking about their forgetfulness, or worse — superstars like Brett Favre and Tony Dorsett —and the issue raged on.

College football annually brings us the best-known award in sports, the Heisman Trophy. This year it was cloaked in controversy too. Johnny Manziel showed us exactly what it looks like when a freshman without adult supervision wins the award. It was enough to give everyone second thoughts — until the voters went ahead and selected another freshman. Here's hoping Jameis Winston's worst moment came before winning the award.

The fall belonged to football, warts and all. The Washington Racial Slurs became a national conversation for reasons other than their play, which was dreadful.

The Miami Dolphins also provided a drama for the front page and the network news. The idea of a 6-5, 312-pound man possibly being bullied by a teammate captured almost everyone's attention. We still have no idea if he was or wasn't. Perhaps the alleged incident was as difficult for investigators to comprehend as it was for the rest of us.

None of this should surprise us anymore. More and more, sports news is real news. For many years now, sports have been more of a reflection of our society than the escape they used to be.

Nonetheless, they still had their inspiring moments in 2013. Boston rebounded beautifully from the marathon tragedy, led by its beloved Red Sox, who became World Series champions, fittingly enough.

Boston's fierce rival, the New York Yankees, said a classy farewell to legendary closer Mariano Rivera. Memo to A-Rod: That's how you say goodbye.

As long as we live, will we ever see a football game end in a more spectacular fashion than November's Auburn-Alabama game — at least a game in which a band was not on the field at the time?

College football gave us this too: 7-year-old Jack Hoffman, the little cancer patient who scored a 69-yard touchdown in Nebraska's spring game.

And what year-end college football discussion can avoid mentioning the BCS? Ironically enough, in the final year of its controversial run, it worked like a dream.

Even the bad could be good. That Armstrong was caught and ruined should be Exhibit A for any parent trying to explain to a high school athlete why he or she shouldn't use performance-enhancing drugs. That's an uphill battle, but Armstrong's story should help, in an anti-hero kind of way.

That's 2013 for you, a trying year for sports. In some ways, it can't end soon enough. But before a cheer goes up, a word of caution: 2014's first big international event will be the Sochi Winter Olympics, held in a troublesome location in a country with a now-legendary anti-gay propaganda law.

And the year's other huge event: the World Cup in Brazil, where part of a stadium just collapsed.